Alex Baumhardt
Alex Baumhardt is a reporter who links Oregon’s education system with the state’s environmental and policy choices, focusing on how laws, agencies and data shape conditions for students and communities. She covers education and the environment for the Oregon Capital Chronicle, and her stories often move between classrooms, universities, public lands and the Legislature. Her work is widely republished across regional outlets, carrying detailed state-level reporting to audiences well beyond a single newsroom.
Compulsory school attendance rules and instructional hours
Baumhardt’s education coverage concentrates on how Oregon’s rules and funding translate into time in school and expectations for students. In a piece on compulsory school attendance, she reports on education officials recommending repeal and replacement of longstanding attendance requirements, examining what a new framework could mean for districts and families. She pairs this with reporting on instructional hours, showing that Oregon mandates a minimum number of hours, not days, and that school year lengths vary dramatically across districts as a result.
Her work in this area uses studies and district-level comparisons to show that some students accumulate the equivalent of years more classroom time than peers elsewhere in the state, highlighting systemic inequities built into policy rather than individual choices.
Across these stories, she treats attendance and instructional time as structural levers that determine opportunity.
She draws attention to how state statutes and agency guidance set floors and ceilings on learning time, and how those decisions align - or fail to align - with research on student outcomes. The reporting blends clear explanation of rules with concrete examples from Oregon districts, keeping the focus on what policies mean for actual school calendars and daily life for students and educators.
Student test scores and learning recovery
Baumhardt tracks student performance through statewide assessment data, using test scores as one lens on post-pandemic recovery. In coverage of Oregon students’ test scores inching up from pandemic lows, she reports on proficiency trends in reading, writing and math, emphasizing the slow pace of improvement and the persistent gap between current results and pre-pandemic levels. Her framing stresses both movement and distance: incremental gains are noted, but she shows how far the system remains from earlier benchmarks.
She connects these score trends back to policy questions such as attendance rules, instructional time, and resource allocation. Her stories often situate test data alongside decisions by state education agencies and school boards, clarifying where policy shifts are intended to drive improvement and where evidence shows they are falling short.
This approach makes her pieces useful for understanding not only what the numbers are, but how they relate to ongoing debates about accountability and support in Oregon schools.
Oregon universities and international enrollment
Baumhardt extends her education beat into higher education, reporting on how global trends affect Oregon’s universities.
In coverage of universities bracing for continued drops in international enrollment, she examines how institutions are preparing for fewer international students, with implications for tuition revenue, academic programs and campus communities. Her reporting looks at both current declines and expectations for future years, showing how administrators plan around sustained pressure rather than a short-term dip.
She treats international enrollment as a structural piece of university finance and academic life, not a side issue. By connecting enrollment trends to budgeting decisions and institutional strategy, she illustrates how global mobility and visa patterns filter down into concrete changes in Oregon lecture halls and research labs.
The higher education work complements her K-12 pieces, giving a continuous view of how policy and demographics shape pathways from school through college.
Data centers, climate policy and disaster preparedness
On the environment side of her beat, Baumhardt focuses on how large-scale infrastructure and policy choices affect land, climate and public risk. Her reporting on data centers in Oregon explores projects proposed on federal public land, describing facilities planned for tens of thousands of acres across Western states under a federal executive order to hasten development.
She examines promises of jobs and economic vibrancy alongside concerns about environmental harm, including impacts on water, energy use and public lands, and has discussed this work in broadcast interviews focused on the true costs of data centers.
She also covers climate policy through legislative coverage of Oregon Republicans revisiting a cap-and-invest carbon proposal years after a high-profile walkout. In that work, she explains how a bipartisan group of lawmakers is weighing the costs and benefits of joining a West Coast carbon market, and how such a system could link Oregon to existing programs in neighboring states and Canada.
Her wildfire reporting includes coverage of disputes over a statewide wildfire risk map, where Republicans accuse Democrats of delaying a repeal vote to secure support for wildfire funding, tying mapping and money together as parts of the same political contest.
Baumhardt’s risk reporting extends to seismic preparedness, where she covers regional earthquake experts warning that plans for critical transportation, water and fuel corridors need more coordination and investment to withstand a future Cascadia “Big One.” Taken together, her environment pieces trace how policy decisions on land use, carbon markets, wildfire planning and earthquake resilience set long-term conditions for communities, often emphasizing the interplay between expert warnings, legislative action and the realities on the ground.
Her background includes national radio work on education for American Public Media’s documentaries and investigations unit, as well as producing the Educate podcast for APM Reports, experience that shows in her careful sourcing and attention to system-level consequences. She frequently writes pieces that are republished by outlets across Oregon, reinforcing a style built around clear explanation, strong use of studies and official documents, and a focus on statewide impact rather than isolated anecdotes.
4 more education journalists.
Abdul Latif Jameel
Abdul Latif Jameel publishes long-form, research-led pieces on how emerging technologies and scientific advances reshape education, industry, and society. He writes for the Abdul Latif Jameel masthead at the intersection of learning, innovation, and applied science, with a focus on technology, skills, and the future of learning. He explains complex fields such as quantum sensing in clear, accessible terms, breaking down frontier science and tying it to real-world applications. His coverage links breakthroughs in sensing, data, and automation to training, curriculum, and lifelong learning. He treats education as an applied system connected to industry, policy, infrastructure, and human development. He reports in an analytical, explanatory style, using research, pilots, and large-scale initiatives to examine how technologies are implemented, evaluated, and scaled in learning and training environments.
Abril Preciado
Abril Preciado is an Emmy award-winning bilingual television journalist at FOX6 News Milwaukee who focuses on education, school crises and policy decisions affecting students, families and staff. She follows school communities over months, from emergency response through investigations, relocation plans and the first day back in class. Her reporting on the Lincoln Avenue School fire covers displacement, safety changes, rebuilding and the move to temporary space. She also uses public records to examine local officials, test official claims and connect government conduct to public trust. Before joining FOX6, she reported for Univision in Sacramento, covering the Farm Workers March, wildfires, politics and the Latino community, and contributed border reporting for a national radio network. She centers families, explains complex decisions clearly and focuses on the human effects of policy.
Adria Iraheta
Adria Iraheta is a community-focused reporter at Denver7, distinct for centering students, families and residents in every story about schools, neighborhoods and public services. She covers how decisions by school districts, local agencies and public institutions land in daily life, with a particular focus on Aurora and Arapahoe County. Her beat sits at the intersection of education, community issues, public services, safety, infrastructure, health and climate, from job cuts in a school district to a new transit safety app, DMV outages, street changes and record heat waves. With a decade of local television reporting experience, she reports on the ground in specific local scenes, using plain language, direct questions to officials and clear explanations to show how policies, programs and changes affect the people who live, study and work in Colorado communities.
Alan J. Borsuk
Alan J. Borsuk stands out for connecting what happens in schools to the policy and political decisions behind them. He writes in-depth K-12 education analysis for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and serves as a senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School. His work focuses on Milwaukee Public Schools, school choice, literacy, teacher pipelines, and school accountability. He uses long-range perspective, detailed reporting, and structured analysis to explain how reforms unfold, why they stall, and what they mean for students and leaders. He has also written on vouchers, Teach for America, discipline, and teacher evaluation, drawing on decades as a reporter and editor on education and public policy.